"Nothing personal at all really"

No apology necessary, I'm not offended/annoyed.

"Does this mean that you're automatically voting for a preset universe of 200+ people, mostly minnows?"

Yes, and it was a huge task. I had to create a spreadsheet where I tracked their post quality, frequency, and created notes. However, it was either that or not support them at all, as focusing on my own work takes a lot of my time up.

That goes on for over 200 entries, and everything past about 30 is minnows with no SP.

"I'm personally a believer in manual quality over quantity in general"

Me too, but when you get to my size, you start getting people whining at you everyday for not voting or following them. You either put up decent people on an autovoter or take crap every day.

You can DM me in MSP PAL if you like.

This post may also answer some of your questions: https://steemit.com/blog/@lexiconical/i-finally-converted-to-steemvoter-partially-it-s-quite-a-relief-actually